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James McMurtry - 60 Acres

In the Carolinas, African American musicians around the first decade of the twentieth century developed a style of music known as the Piedmont blues. An important form of traditional music in North Carolina, the Piedmont blues is characterized by a guitar style that contains a distinct bass line played on the lower strings of the guitar as well as a melody picked on the higher strings. The bouncy, fingerpicked guitar style of Piedmont blues distinguishes it from Delta blues, which is often slow and mournful. Vocals, often paralleled by the melody played on the guitar, tell about the triumphs and trials of everyday life, such as work, love, heartbreak, loneliness, and the pitfalls of drinking and other overindulgences.

Within the Piedmont blues tradition, women developed a distinctive sound, and many of the best exponents of this tradition were North Carolinians, including Etta Baker of Morganton, Alga Mae Hinton of Johnston County, and Elizabeth Cotten of Carrboro. Cotten's inimitable picking style and heartbreaking vocals... evoked the hard life shared by many southern, rural African Americans.

The blues continue to thrive in North Carolina. The rise of the Chicago blues, which featured electrified instruments, led to the formation of full blues bands by the 1950s, and eventually these influences migrated to the state... The Durham Blues Festival, one of the first blues festivals held in the South, began in 1973 and features nationally recognized blues acts. Raleigh... and Greensboro all offer steady diets of local performers and blues societies for aficionados.


James McMurtry - 60 Acres
  • Written by: James McMurtry
  • Genre: Pop/Rock, Country
  • Release on: March 23, 2004

"James McMurtry earned his highest Billboard 200 chart position in 2008 and notched Americana Music Award nominations. He won the Americana Music Association’s Album of the Year, with We Can’t Make It Here named the organization’s Song of the Year."

See previous Song of the Day

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Location: United States

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